Steampunk II: Steampunk Reloaded

by Jeff VanderMeer

  Megan’s heart beat hard in her chest, and her throat hurt. “You can’t do that,” she whispered.

  His look was like a blow.

  “Can’t I?” Oberon raised his hand and spread the fingers wide. Suddenly he clenched them and spread them again. One beat of a heart.

  Casey cried out and fell to one knee. His hand flew to his chest, leaving a smear on his t-shirt.

  “No!” cried Megan, starting to her feet, and the Rangers advanced.

  Oberon clenched again, and Casey fell into the ferns. His lips were blue.

  “Stop it!” shouted Megan.

  Oberon stared at her, but kept his hand open.

  “That’s not necessary,” Uncle Leroy said finally, his voice tight with the strain. “We have laws to deal with this kind of situation.”

  Uncle Leroy knelt beside Casey. “Breathe. You’ll be okay, son. Just breathe.”

  Oberon threw the Ranger a withering glance. “Human laws,” he said. “Cromwell’s laws, Natural Law, law of supply and demand. I’ve had enough of your laws. The boy will die.” His hand tensed.

  He wants something, thought Megan. Or else he would have killed Casey by now. He wants something from me. And I was in charge.

  “A trade,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady, as if she was not terrified. Was that what Oberon wanted?

  Oberon smiled, frosty. He said, “A trade, then, your life for his?” Uncle Leroy was protesting, and the other Rangers too, but their words were unimportant, an officious human babble.

  “Is there a law?” Megan looked past Oberon. Titania stood there, in her rustling garments with her eyes like leaves. “One of your laws? Is there?”

  Uncle Leroy’s voice penetrated, finally. “Megan. Let us handle this. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”

  Titania tilted her head, ignoring Uncle Leroy. “There is a law.” Her voice was a tinkling bell to the King’s basso. “The law of geis, if my lord agrees.”

  Oberon lowered his hand. “If it pleases my lady,” he said, and grinned.

  His teeth were pointed. Megan felt sick.

  “Oh God,” said Uncle Leroy. Megan couldn’t look at him, looked instead at Casey, white and shaking, still holding a stone in his left hand.

  “Geis!” said the fox-faced man, licking his lips as if tasting something new. “Your service for your brother’s life. For how long?”

  Megan shook away the fragmented images in her head—Uncle Leroy, red-faced, arguing with the other Rangers; Casey, his eyes huge, watching as Titania’s fairies drew her away between the trees. “Until My Lady pleases,” said Megan.

  The man jumped back and cocked his head to one side. Megan was startled. He looked human until then.

  “I wonder,” he said, “if Oberon planned it that way, as soon as he saw the dead dryad. He is almost as clever as me.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “To have a human bondservant, not a child stolen from the cradle, but a girl-woman, of her own free will? Such a thing has not been done since before the Ban. Tell me, are you bleeding yet?” His head wagged and he looked more and more like some long-snouted animal.

  She gasped and laughed at the same time. “That’s none of your business! And why would...”

  “Because your kind is made of dirt and blood-and-snot and spit, and there’s power in that,” he said. She saw he’d grown a tail.

  “He promised no harm would come to me. That was part of it.” She looked at her hands, feeling again Oberon’s, Titania’s clasped about them, in front of Casey, the Rangers, a stone digging into her knee. Pledging her service. Geis.

  “Harm?” He barked the word. “The Fae aren’t human. You don’t know what they mean when they say ‘no harm.’ What does a war chief mean when he says ‘no harm’? A midwife? A slaver? A man of God? He wants you like a pregnant woman wants to eat clay.” He was yipping, and his ears were growing long and pointed.

  “Who are you?” she said, sharply. He was more than half a dog already.

  Suddenly he was again a man. “I am Coyote,” he said. “And I was here long before the exile Fae. And I have come back. And tonight, in the dark of the moon, I will come and tell you a story, since you told me yours so prettily.”

  “Wait!” she said, although he hadn’t moved. “Tell me...why is he so angry?”

  “Angry?” he said, surprised and amused, as if she had guessed the answer to a riddle.

  “Yes. Every time he looks at me, even when he doesn’t hate me, I feel it.”

  “Exiles are angry,” he said. “I should know. When the Fae came from Albion, hunted from their domains, how welcome they were in this grand new land. And then they were pushed west, west, west again, as people, humans, strong in their earth-bound, flat-footed, blood and snot way, planted and ate and planted more to eat. Pushed the Fae, and the Fae pushed the Indian: Oberon and Custer together. And when they were, oh so kindly, deeded these lands, they pushed out my people, and with them Raven, and Eagle, and Bear, and the Thunderbird, and the demons of the lakes. I know how Oberon feels.”

  Megan saw a cliff, scattered with small white flowers, and at its lip tiny figures falling, over and over, into the sea. She blinked the image away.

  Coyote stepped behind the tree and Megan knew if she looked, she would not find him on the other side. The fairies played that trick often enough.

  3

  The next day, Titania wanted sand dollars, and that chore drove the Coyote from her thoughts. Megan went to the shore alone: the fairies didn’t like the water. Megan wondered why, because it was beautiful here, with dawn streaking the low waters blue and pink, and blackberry brambles growing to the water’s edge. Sea-polished logs nestled in the flat pebbles of the shore. Sometimes she liked to sit and watch the faint blur across the sound—a harbor town outside of the Reserve. For some time she had not been able to remember its name, although she thought perhaps that was where she and Casey and her parents has been staying. She had a memory, sometimes, of discarded clothes wadded up on a motel floor, and Mom’s voice telling them to pick up their mess. Or the taste of soda, forbidden at home, in a touristy burger stand.

  But perhaps it was somewhere else. She couldn’t recall. How long did they stay, trying to force human law on the Fae, trying to free her? When had they given up? A driftwood log moved, the pebbles underneath clanking. A seal? She saw them, sometimes, their heads bobbing up and down in the waters of the Sound. They didn’t ever seem to come up on the beach at the Fae Reserve, however.

  It was bigger than a seal: walrus-sized, smooth and shiny. It shifted again and she heard a faint moan. She went closer, and the breeze brought her a distinctly fishy odor.

  The stranded creature was glossy, with black-and-white markings like a killer whale. But it wasn’t a whale—Megan had never seen anything like it.

  It did have a large, whalelike paddle of a tail, and a set of flippers. But the head was blunt and round, and it had two enormous eyes, disproportionately large for the head. They were the size of coconuts and had hardly any white at all—all brown iris and dull black pupil. The mouth was huge, a long slit that bisected the head halfway round, with bulbous, rubbery lips. When the creature gasped for air, she glimpsed rows of pointed teeth.

  Over the eyes sprouted feelers, like a catfish’s: three above each eye, thin and supple—about two feet long and tipped on the ends with small round knobs. There was a whistling sound as it tried to breathe and the fishy smell was very strong.

  The huge brown eyes rolled up at her, and the creature stirred again. It seemed to be trying to roll towards the water, fifty feet away, but could not gain purchase on the smooth rocks. Megan studied its smooth black-and-white flank and saw a gash, about two inches wide. Something protruded from the wound, and small bubbles of the creature’s reddish-ochre blood oozed around it.

  She knelt beside it, hoping it wouldn’t whip around with those wicked teeth. She touched its side with the flat of her hand. It jerked once.
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  The object inside the gash looked like a thick stone sliver. She touched it, and the creature flinched, then held still. She grasped the splinter and pulled it hard—it was slippery and she had to wiggle it free. Dark thick fluid flowed from the wound. Then, like a seamless zipper, the slit closed up on its own. Except for the blood, there was no mark on the glossy hide.

  She looked at the object in her palm. It was stone, a flint, chipped and crafted into a sharp blade. It looked like an Indian arrowhead, but she knew it wasn’t. She’d seen these before, on the forest paths. It was a fairy point.

  The creature shifted again. Dropping the Fae weapon, Megan braced herself against the smooth side and pushed as hard as she could. The thing was solid, and heavy, and it took all her strength to roll it halfway over.

  Her efforts seemed to hearten the creature, and it pushed with its flippers and tail. Again she rolled it, and again. The muscles in her back protested, but she kept on, grimly.

  She was strong. She was dirt and blood and sweat and snot.

  Her shoulders were cramping by the time they reached the water’s edge.

  As the Sound washed against the creature’s side it found new vigor and with a last mighty push it rolled into the water. Salt sprayed her face as it cracked its tail on the surface, propelling itself into the depths. She watched its wake arrow away from the shore of the Reserve.

  Quickly she gathered as many sand dollars as she could for the Queen. When she went to look for the fairy point she found nothing but a smear of black ash.

  “You stink of fish,” said Titania, when Megan brought her the shells. “Don’t come back in to my presence until you’re clean again.”

  Dirt and sweat. Snot and blood.

  4

  The night was chilly and the smaller fairies liked to sleep on top of Megan, for she was warmer than they were. Their cold bodies made her shiver. Still, she managed to push free and sought the roots of her cedar.

  She dozed off and woke with a start, not to a stray Fae weaving sticks in her hair, but the silhouette of a man against the stars.

  “You owe me a story,” she said.

  “What did you do today? You smell.”

  “Titania wanted shells, so I went to the water. They don’t like to look at the sea.”

  “They used to, when it was new to them. I remember.”

  Megan hesitated, then asked: “What has markings like a killer whale and huge brown eyes and feelers on the top of its head?”

  He quirked an eyebrow. “Kooshinga,” he said. “A water-demon. Could it be you saw one?”

  She didn’t like his mocking tone, and besides, the incident with the Kooshinga was one of the only things that belonged to her alone. “You owe me a story,” she said again.

  Coyote bent close and his eyes were enormous.

  “There was a girl,” he said, “a slave of a great chief. One day, she found a lump of copper in the stream. She found another, and another, and knew they must have their source upstream.

  “She tracked the copper, until she found a tremendous lump, an entire boulder. Enough to buy her freedom, the freedom of a hundred slaves.

  “She took the lumps she’d found, hid them in her skirt, and polished them until they glowed. Then she waited until the great chief held a potlatch, a feast for all his tribe and their allies. She waited with the other women by the cooking fires, until she knew it was time for the hosts and their guests to outdo each other by offering rich gifts.

  “She walked into the lodge, straight and proud, walked to the bench where her master sat, and everyone fell silent and stared as she passed by. She looked neither to the left nor the right. She walked straight to the chief and stood before him.

  “He had feasted well, so he was in a good mood.

  “‘What do you want, Little Maid?’ he said. ‘A blanket, or a bowl, or a necklace?’

  “‘None of these,’ she replied. ‘I want my freedom.’

  “‘And what do you have that would buy the freedom of a pretty slave?’ he said, admiring her courage.

  “For answer, she reached out her hand and dropped three pieces of copper on the hem of his robe. In the firelight they shone like fragments of the setting sun.

  “‘A fair gift, but not enough to purchase a slave,’ he said. ‘You price yourself too cheaply.’

  “‘This is nothing,’ she said. ‘In the woods is a great boulder of copper that I will show you and make no claim to, if I may be free. More copper than anyone has ever had before.’

  “‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow you will show me. If you speak the truth, you shall go free. But if you are lying, little slave, you will die.’

  “The next day she led the chief to the boulder, and gained her freedom, and found her own man and lodge in the lands of the Kwakiutl. And so my story ends happily.”

  “What happened to the chief?” asked Megan.

  Coyote grinned. “Given so much copper, he was overcome with greed and kept it all himself, refusing to give rich gifts to his friends and rivals and allies. And so he diminished in honor and stature, growing old before his time, and died clutching his boulder of copper, wizened like a spider.

  “But we are not concerned with him. We speak of the girl, who bargained with copper for her freedom.”

  She stared at him. “The Fae want copper?”

  “Ah,” he replied. “Not anything so simple. I’m going to have to tell you another story.”

  Coyote slid to the ground, crossing his legs and resting his hands on his knees. “There was a time when all the animals walked the earth on two feet and spoke together, and Man was just another animal. Then everything changed. Something made it change.

  “Sometimes it was one thing and sometimes it was another. Sometimes it was the Bears and sometimes it was Thunderbird. But this is what I remember best. I remember a shadow blotting out the sun. I remember something like a great warship sailing the sky. Immense and streamlined, like a dolphin, and the red-gold color of copper. And how it sang...”

  He closed his eyes. “Such a strange song, so alien, maybe even not music at all, it shouldn’t have been so beautiful. But it was sad, and lovely, and all the animals stopped, staring up at the sky. Some wept, some covered their ears and turned away, and some laughed. That’s when everyone started to change, to become the way they are now. The Beaver and the Wolf and the Frog and the Man.

  “I was one of those who laughed. And then...”

  He opened his eyes. “It fell.

  “There are many stories about Copper Woman. How she was made by the One Who Made The World and made mankind from the stuff that came from her body. How she married the Wealthy Chief who lives under the sea. How she controls the volcanoes.

  “But this is what I remember: Copper Woman came from the sky and fell, hard and enormous, into the soft earth beneath the shallow sea. She sank deep, and the islands grew above her. She made things change. So long ago, I can hardly remember. Sleeping, she changed the world. I wonder, what might she do if she was awake?

  “Pieces of her still work their way up through the dirt. Copper, but different from the native copper of the place—crafted, twisted, Wild Copper. Every piece plays a part. Every fragment tells a story. This is what the Sidhe Queen craves. Wild Copper.

  “Since I came back I’ve whispered stories about Copper Woman, Wild Copper, every night, every noon to Titania as she sleeps. I’ve made her dream of it, and crave it. She thinks it will give her the power to break free of these inlet woods, this tiny finger of land your people have driven them to. She thinks the Wild Copper is tiny parts of a great magic.

  “The Fae don’t know anything about machines. Sitting cheek by jowl with humans a thousand years, they think they do. But they were never at Trinity, never at Hiroshima, like I was. They don’t know a damn thing.

  “But you’re still human. You don’t get distracted by the pattern of the bark or a moonbeam. You’re still dirt: you understand machines. I’ll help you find it. You can buy y
our freedom from Titania.”

  Freedom. From Oberon. From the fairies’ teasing. From the fear that soon she would not want to be free at all.

  “What will happen, when Titania has her machine?”

  His face flickered, becoming birdlike, bearlike, again vulpine.

  “This is what I think will happen. Copper Woman will hatch out of the deep mud. She will awaken and break free.”

  “Out of the Sound?”

  “Out of the Sound.”

  “Under the hills?”

  He thumbed an itch away from his forehead and sighed.